“Do you feel kinship with his Olson and Morgan?” Purbright asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
There had been a pause, certainly, before Amis’s response, but Purbright was not sure whether it betokened guilt or puzzlement. Probably, he told himself, the latter. The man’s undiminished pleasantness of manner implied anxiety to understand a witticism that had not quite connected.
“I was referring to Mr Hatch’s somewhat expensive sporting gun,” Purbright explained.
Chapter Twenty-one
“Ah.” Amis smiled. “Yes, it would be an expensive one, naturally.”
“You are not a shooting man, yourself, sir?”
“I’m afraid not. You will not find me responding satisfactorily to the dropping of famous names in that department, inspector.”
“A more peaceable occupation, perhaps, would appeal to you?”
“Conceivably.”
“Let us see, then, if I may drop a name to which you will respond. One with essentially pacific associations.”
Purbright considered, or pretended to. The three others in the room watched him: Mr Chubb gravely, Sergeant Love with one eye on his tape, Amis in patience.
“Gibbons,” said the inspector.
“The Decline and Fall gentleman,” said Amis at once. “Of the Roman Empire.” Love’s expression warmed to admiration: he was an avid spectator of television quiz games. But Purbright shook his head.
“That one, I think you’ll find, was Gibbon singular. Gibbons is the name on a famous and exhaustive catalogue of postage stamps.”
In his corner, Mr Chubb nodded in concurrence.
“We’ll try another,” Purbright said. “How do you react to the resonance of the Oxonia Philatelic Trading Corporation? Of New York and London?”
A small but noticeable change had affected Amis’s amiability. It now was edged with brittleness.
“So unlikely a title must be genuine. I presume we have arrived at the heavy hinting stage, have we, inspector?”
“No, sir. At the honest explanation stage, I should have hoped. Tell me this for a start. When you handed Hatch an uncompleted cheque made out to Oxo for him to sign in that off-handed and very unbusinesslike way that he probably imagined was appropriate to being rich, was it not with the clear intention of expanding ‘Oxo’ to Oxonia, adding the rest of the firm’s title and finally inserting the amount—a substantial amount—for payment?”
Amis regarded him with a sort of repressed derision—rather like indigestion, except that laughter rather than wind was trying to come up.
The inspector did not wait long before pursuing his theme.
“And did you not pay to the London branch of Oxonia by the method I have described a total of”—he bent forward to consult a slip of paper—“of just under £4000 since February of last year?”
Spectator Love hurriedly looked away, but his eyes were already bulging and his lips funnelled.
“For what?” asked Amis, as quietly as he could, it seemed, lest his amusement erupt.
“For a number of rare stamps you had commissioned the firm to obtain for you, notably a set of five misprints from the two-and-a-half lire Vatican City issue of 1932.”
Amis turned up his eyes. “Dear god,” he sighed, “do I look like a stamp collector?”
Purbright deputised with an answer. “Possibly not, sir; but one does not have to look like an engraver in order to draw notes from a bank. A valuable stamp is as good as a load of currency: better, because it is less likely to depreciate and it can be more privately negotiated.”
“Two and a half lire doen’t sound much like a load of currency, not even by 1932 standards.”
Purbright sighed. “You really must stop trying to sell your intelligence short, Mr Amis. This is your desk, is it not?”
“Until you arrived, yes.” The humorous attitude was back, but it was wry now, and had sharper calculation behind it.
The inspector opened the drawer. He picked out a pinch of stamp hinges and let them flutter to the desk surface in front of Amis. There was a lens in the drawer and close by, a pair of tweezers and a rectangular piece of plastic, rather like a rule, except that its edges were serrated.
“You may claim not to look like a stamp collector, but you seem to have acquired some of the tools of the trade.” Purbright picked up the toothed rule. “Even a perforation gauge. Remember the specifications of the Naked Nuns, Mr Amis? Nineteen and fifteen?”
A grin. “Bit young for nuns, surely?”
“Exactly what we thought when we first heard of them.” Purbright, too, was smiling. “ ‘Perf. nineteen, fifteen...’ Rather like one of the odder brothel advertisements, with ‘perf’ for perfect—the standard exaggeration, of course.” He heard from the outfield Mr Chubb’s little cough of rebuke. “Now we know better. Nineteen perforations on the horizontal sides, fifteen on the vertical. And ‘Naked Nun’ the trade nickname for the result of the rather puckish philatelic mishap in 1932 whereby two vignette plates were transposed at the printers.”
Purbright, happening to glance at Love, saw on his face so plain a plea for curiosity to be satisfied at once that he amplified the account for the sergeant’s special benefit.
“The frame of the stamp depicted a procession of nuns, and the oval insertion, the so-called head plate, should have been a portrait of Pope Pius the Eleventh. But what actually appeared was one of Manet’s ‘Olympia’.”
“Olympia?” echoed Love, unable to help himself.
“A famous nude painting, sergeant.”
“French,” added Amis, drawing upon an almost depleted reserve of waggish confidence. Purbright he addressed with more seriousness.
“It is obvious that I should have known better than to pretend absolute ignorance, inspector. I simply didn’t want to be drawn into an investigation of Hatch’s affairs. I might add that the possibility of my receiving attention from his gangster friends didn’t much appeal either.”
“Ah, yes, his Mafia associations. What do you know about those, Mr Amis?”
“Virtually nothing. Except that Hatch was having to pay out money. Protection money, I suppose one would call it. Club proprietors do tend to get involved with that sort of thing. It’s true, of course, that I know a little about stamps. I advised Hatch on which ones he should buy. It is possible that he used some of them to meet his protection bills. I don’t know. As you say, though, stamps are negotiable.”
Purbright nodded. “I’m so glad you’ve been frank, sir. This stamps business had been puzzling us a good deal. Hatch was a man of some accomplishment, but I couldn’t quite see him as an informed enthusiast in so specialised a field.”
Both men looked amused at the thought. Amis was still smiling when the inspector said casually: